What Rough Beast?
by Speakfire
Summary: Child prodigies like River Tam aren't the only ones The Academy experimented on... Rated T for language at the moment.


A/N - This was one of those things that just exploded in my mind after I watched the movie _X-men Origins: Wolverine _and then happened to glance over and see my copy of _Serenity._ Sometimes you can't help stuff like that. This is the result that muse explosion, and I hope you like the start of my story. I'll update asap. The title of the story is from the William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming", which happens to be one of the best poems ever written. Oh, and if you read my story, please drop me a review--this is my first crossover and I have no idea what people will think.

Disclaimer: The X-men, Firefly universe and Wolverine do not belong to me but to a great many others who are far richer and more influential than I am. I'm not making a profit from this, and this story is just for entertainment.

* * *

**_PROLOGUE_**

The few times he seemed on the verge of regaining consciousness, his head hurt like a son of a bitch. It was, by far, the worst and most persistent headache he'd ever experienced in his long, long life. It was the headache from hell—the headache to end all headaches. The worst part was that it wasn't localized in a single area. His entire head hurt—everywhere—from the neck up, his ears, his nose, hell, even his damn eyelids ached with pain.

And through it all, he had the vaguest sense of being very cold. Beyond cold, in fact. He was freezing to the extent that he couldn't seem to feel his extremities. That probably would have worried most men, but given who he was, and more importantly _what _he was, he honestly wasn't really concerned about that. The feeling would return to his arms and legs eventually. It always did.

What really pissed him off was that he couldn't quite remember what had caused it this time, this disconnective and extended near slumber, though he instinctively knew that the lingering darkness was lasting longer than it had on previous occasions.

It was enough to make a sane man go mad, and well, he'd certainly never been classified as entirely sane. There were probably quite a few who wouldn't even classify him as a man at all—well, as a human at least. The animal inside him would rage in fury at the impenetrable wall of consciousness, scratching, growling and clawing in the utter chill of darkness until he was literally worn out with the mental effort of trying to break through to the other side, and then..

He drifted endlessly. Days passed. Or perhaps eons. It was all the same to him, really, especially in this dark place.

_I feel like a damn leaf carried along a river to nowhere,_ he thought dimly at one point.

_River._

He'd never been particularly intuitive, being a creature—well, a man—that was more prone to following his instincts. But he knew that single word had not been formed by his own thought.

_Xavier?_ He asked wordlessly, but immediately dismissed that notion. There was something distinctly feminine about the other person who had touched his mind. _Jean, is that you?_ This time his query was more subdued, more troubled. Jean was dead, unless she'd risen from the dead again, and after what had happened the last time she went from dead to alive… Her answer exploded painfully in his mind.

_RIVER!!!_

It was a scream of agonized pain, a shriek of pure terror, and the piteous cry of a wounded child all in a single burst of psychic emotion, and no matter who or what had put him into his extended present state of unbeing, he instinctively knew that what this girl was going through was a hundred times, no, a thousand times worse.

It stirred his animalistic side to action. Frenzied, he rammed himself at that unseen wall of wakefulness, over and over again, with a desperation borne of concern not for himself, but for the nameless girl—_Just a goddamn kid!_—whose tortured mind cry had numbed his own pain into worthlessness. He knew eventually he'd get better. He doubted she'd be so lucky.

The heat of his wrath chased away the worst of that persistent frigid cold, and suddenly his inhumanely sharp senses could barely detect the faint scent of disinfectant mingled with metal and flesh and other far more unpleasant things that even he was reluctant to put a name to. There seemed to be alarms, beeping, scurrying all taking place around him, and panic in the air. Just how he liked it. He could feel the barest tingle of feeling in his arms and his thighs and knew if he could just push a little further, a little harder, then he could….

It got a LOT colder in a hurry and despite his animalistic raving he felt the dark waters of deep unconsciousness lapping at him, dragging him under, back beneath that sluggishly flowing river.

There was no echoing voice in his head this time.

As the bitter chill settled down on him again, his hot fury subsided to smoldering helpless rage. He'd escape sooner or later. He always did. And when he did, there'd be hell to pay.


End file.
